Lightweight signature scheme to protect intellectual properties of Internet of things applications in system on chip field-programmable gate arrays

Abstract

Billions of smart objects in the edge devices offer advanced connectivity to networks which increase thesecurity and complexity of the Internet of things (IoT) applications. To make such entities smarter heterogeneousintellectual property (IP) cores from multiple service providers are reused in system on chip platform. Enabling bothchip and IP protection at post fabrication level is imperative. The IoT-based IP cores are signed with the hybridphysical unclonable function and finite state machine model to protect from cloning, misuse, unauthorized user access,and physical attacks. The extended finite-state machine is used to verify the signature, which reduces the space andtime complexity. The goal is to design a secure plug-and-play system which supports IoT IP core for the unique chipwithout using any complex algorithms and huge memory storage. Experimental results show that the average overheadvalues of area and power are 1.05% and 1.08% less, respectively, compared with the existing IP protection.